Emotional Dysregulation as a Factor of Psychosomatic Disturbances in Depression and Cardiovascular Pathology (Analytical Review of Foreign Literature)

Abstract

The review presents data on cognitive processes of emotional regulation, which are the result of the interaction of the activity of the prefrontal cortex and emotional centers, as the most important pathogenetic link in the psychosomatic relations of depressive and cardiovascular diseases. The neuroanatomical substrate of emotional regulation is the connection between emotional and cognitive processes, which are carried out through bidirectional neuronal interactions between the neocortex and emotional centers. This connection allows emotional centers to modulate cortical activity, and cognitive centers, through descending cortical influences, to modulate the processing of emotions. At present, direct and indirect connections of the frontal cortex with the centers of the autonomic nervous system and its stimulating sympathetic and inhibitory parasympathetic influences have been confirmed. Pathogenetic links of emotional dysregulation include neurobiological and cognitive (rumination, fixation on negative information) processes. The pathophysiological mechanisms of depression and cardiovascular diseases have common links - the dysregulation of the metabolic, immunological and hypothalamus-pituitary-adrenal systems. The tendency to negative emotional response, the prevalence of negative emotions and alexithymia (low awareness of emotions) stand out as predictors of the development of both cardiovascular diseases and depression. Studies aimed at studying the typology and meaning of emotional dysregulation in various forms of psychopathological disorders in the aspect of comorbidity and psychosomatic relationships with somatic diseases can be fruitful in terms of finding new approaches to diagnosis and therapy.

Keywords

• cognitive emotion regulation
• emotional dysregulation
• alexithymia
• depression
• hypertension
• cardiac disease